AN ARCH TRICKSTER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19128, 2 October 1924, Page 12

AN ARCH TRICKSTER

ANT LION DIGS PIT TO TRAP ITS PREY. An arch trickster, in the form of a pit-making ant lion, has Just been added to the collection in the London Zoo insect house, writes A.E.H. in the Daily Chronicle. The newcomer has already fashioned the conical sand pit characteristic of its species ,but all that the plump little excavator shows of himself is his pair of mandibles protruding from the sand : t the bottom. It was with much method and cleverness that the pit was constructed. First of all, the ant lion—which is really the larva of a four-winged insect resembling a dragon fly—strikes a circle in the sand by using its body as a kind of ploughshare, after which it proceeds to remove the sand within the boundary by turning its head into a shovel, as it were, The sand is pushed on the back of the flattened head with one leg, and then shot away by a sudden jerk. Proceeding thus, in ever narrowing and deepening circles, the ant lion at length produces a pit of the shape of an inverted cone. An insect which reaches the edge of the pit is doomed, for the dry sand crumbles away beneath its feet and it slips to the bottom, where the ant lion is for ever on the alert. Should the victim attempt to ascend the treacherous slope, a volley of sand comes hurtling upon it from the shovel-head below, and it is quickly brought down.